hmm...I am not blind to those things at all. (Haven't read the Rapporteur report, so not commenting on it.) The wars are over (they did not happen in a vacuum either), suicide attacks inside Israel are all but non existant these days, the main danger in rockets coming out of Gaza is that some day one might actually reach its goal, but the Iron Dome would knock it out. I think Israelis are just as good at hating Arabs as Arabs are at hating Israelis. Israel is premier power in the region. It comes from a position of vastly superior strength to the Palestinians. No Arab army is going to invade Israel. Israel won. But it won't make peace. On the other hand, Palestinians are some of the most educated people in Arab countries. The combination of Israeli and Palestinian entrepreneurs and skilled labor would set a rocket underneath both economies. Isolating itself is the real existential threat to Israel

I don't know but it seemed to me that the Syrian protests began as non-violently as the other Arab Spring protests. They Assad came down heavy. Right away, the US and other countries called for Assad to step down and/or funded favorite fations of rebels. My question is what would have called for Assad's departure. Even after the killing started, the rebels seemed open to discussion to end the fighting. At that point, the US worked with Russia in the Security Council. I don't think the demonstrators foresaw getting into a military situation and/or were prepared to and/or thought they could beat the regime in such a case. Russia insisted that no SC resolution call for Assad's departure. The US refused. IF the goal was to stop the killing, why didn't the US call Russia's bluff at the SC and 'force' it to rein in Assad? Shortly after, foreign $$, statements and false offers of support came in and acted as gasoline igniting embers. It is disgusting. Why interventionism is so cynical and dangerous. It distorts the immediate balance of power and ability to know when to fold your cards, retreat and come back later.

I think I understand you to mean that Croatia was an 'independent' country or entity before it made up part of Yugoslavia whereas the other two weren't. I think it's a fair distinction that I did not make. However, my criticism of the West stands on its early recognition of Croatia, which signaled approval of a break-up of Yugoslavia. No doubt the Eastern European countries needed to revolt against regimes which were pawns of the Soviets. Yugoslavia was not. It's 'goulash communism' stood in contrast and offered a bridge between East and West during the second half of 20th century. It joined the non-aligned nations. I think Western triumphilism drove the recognition of Croatia to devastating results. Then again, given the break up of USSR, that may have been inevitable and I may be indulging myself in sentimentality.

"If they were yearning for their own state, they would gladly recognize Israel as a Jewish state, to get rid of the Israelis."

I think you are wrong. The only thing that will 'get rid' of the occupation is a legal treaty (contract) that finally and resolutely settles the claims of two peoples. Recognizing Israel as a Jewish state is irrelevant to that outsome. Netanyahu knows this. Or else he'd say that recognition of Israel as a Jewish state itself settles all outstanding claims. He can't do this. Therefore, he is using this demand as a 'poison pill'. Don't be so naive.

All this reigniting the cold war talk is laughable. During the Cold War, we had the Warsaw Pact countries, a united USSR and lines no nation in Europe dared cross.

Now NATO and the EU are at Russia's front door, yet the US can't let up on provoking Russia in its own backyard. Russia has a major naval base in Crimea. Dont tell me we didn't back Saudi Arabia's intervention in Brahain to protect US military interests there.

There are Palestinian refugee camps in several other Arab countries. They are separated from civilian towns and cities and residents have no legal rights or (I think) no passports as citizens of the 'host' country. That is why the 'right of return' to Israel by refugees is such a big issue in Palestinian/Israeli peace talks.

This is an interesting point. However, it seems the computing capacity of NSA is so large they decrease the size of the haystack and find the needle at the same time. Sort of like Google, only ten times more power.

So, a petition has 30,000 signatures out of 1.5 billion Muslims? That is nothing. I question why Young Turks gives it exposure. It's too easy.. THEY make it an issue. Don't emulate the right wing media which takes the stupidest arguments of non-conservatives to rally against instead of responding to well-developed arguments.

With all due respect for the actions of the Iraq Veterans, I believe stalling out this bill took the efforts of many groups and individuals, including foreign policy think tanks, church organizations, long-time anti-war activists and Capital Hill lobbying by both the National Iranian American Association and Jstreet - not to mention Obama's refusal to budge on his veto threat (finally!). In fact, Kirk did NOT withdraw the bill or his support for it.

Why do you take it upon yourself, presumably as a non-Iraqi, to make this statement? I find it rather cavalier. Hussein did not take form in 1991 and was a 3rd rate dictator by 2003. He was a brutal dictator and provocateur of the Iran/Iraq war. There were a sizable number, but actually a pitiful minority, of anti-war people who lobbied against the US taking sides in the Iran/Iraq war, which turned into yet another proxy war of the Cold War. Please, do not put yourself into a position that apologizes for Hussein. Stick to the knitting: the US was wrong in supporting him and idiotic for invading. Let the Iraqis judge their own lives.

IT is my understanding that O'Reilly piggy backed on Fox Sports. The President is a big sports fan. He gets interviewed before major sports games, asking who he's for or who he thinks will win. He enjoys that. Fox won the 2014 SB contract. I thought he handled Bill's interview well.

Oh, please. Lawmakers went home for Labor Day and were deluged with complaints from their constituencies who did not support the Syrian bombing. Obama was smart. He responded by sending the issue to Congress and making them decide, too. People now support the negotiations with Iran by 2 to one. "..but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones."

Using the ICC has always been the alternative to peace negotiations with Israel. The PA promised not to go that route as long as negotiations lasted. Who knows if Israel pledged anything close to this. This is what Netanyahu faces if the talks collapse.

The opponents of Iranian diplomacy are gearing up like never before in Congress. "Liberals' like Shumer are already badmouthing the agreement. Please, readers of IC, write to your Congressmembers and Senators. Help counter the calls they will receive from AIPAC supporters. Numbers count!

There's no relativity here. Quaddafi was an egomaniac, brutal dictator who ran his country to the ground. Socialist-leaning? Oh, please! He and Hussein and Assad rejected Western capitalism for oligarchies they each control. I think US should not have bombed Libya. But call Quaddafi and the rest out for what they were. Yes, they suppressed Islamists but their was little benign about their rule.

It's a feature of the current debate within Israel about a Palestinian treaty and Iran that so many military and intelligence chiefs disagree with the civilian leadership. The Gatekeepers, nominated for an Oscar, documented the six former Shin Bet intelligence chiefs as believing a deal for a Palestinian state is vital to Israel's survival. These guys are not patsies!

One clarification: are all these programs atomic or 'hydrogen' or thermonuclear bombs? It is my understanding these are many times more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Do all nuclear nations now have that technology? Even Pakistan and India?

I've been to the West Bank twice. I've seen the imposing wall, I've talked to Palestinians who have been displaced, I've seen the modern Israeli highways that settlers take while Palestinians are forced to take worn roads that take three times longer to get from A to B as before, the tanks on top of Palestinians homes that hold the portion of water Israel sends to the West bank (which has to be 'prudently' used by each Palestinian family) as well as the banal checkpoints of humiliation and the myriad types of restraints imposed by Israel on the Palestinian economy. But please, making statements like these "are more brutal than those set up by South Africa in the heyday of Apartheid" is presumptuous. How do you know which is the worse case? That comment tends to trivialize South African Apartheid by using it rather cavalierly and in a not well-informed (or documented) comparison with the Palestinian occupation, and it fails to recognize the particulars of Israeli occupation of the West Bank. The struggles of South Africans against their apartheid and Palestinians against theirs are different. "Apartheid' is not a slogan, it was real in S. Africa and is real in the W. Bank. Learn the difference.

No, the loss of manufacturing was set in the 70s when foreign competitors in steel and auto invented new processes of steel production and better cars than American companies and continued unabated in the early 80s as Reagan brought in his air traffic controllers lock-out to shift blame to greedy workers. The '70s were a period called at the time "stagflation". You could put a $10,000 CD in a money market for double digit growth. Interest rates peaked at 21%. Who want to invest in the stock market or in innovation when you could build a retirement with hardly any risk through money market CDs. Volker famously 'choked off inflation' with rising interest rates. The late '80s marked the rise of finance - buy-outs, take-overs and restructuring - that accelerated the trend of de-industrialization. The deals basically sold and traded parts of industrial America without creating jobs, new production and were/are parasitical. At one point, finance made up 40 per cent of GDP. Look at it now: what could be more parasitical that 'synthetic credit default swaps'. Clinton only opened the gate wider.

That's really how the international system should work - on trade and its the alternative China promotes. Instead of military alliances and competing spheres. That's why China is uniform in voting against interventionism, which of course, is its founding. Good comment, thanks!

Read General McCalister's book, "Dereliction of Duty" which documents 1960=1964. He and other historians believe the key reason Johnson continued the war was straight up politics. He needed something to trade with hard line war advocates for their votes on civil rights legislation.

Obama is playing a long game. He's been embarrassed, if not humiliated, by Netanyahu. But he has not as yet been outmaneuvered by him. IF Israel bombs Iran, Obama will have been taken for a ride by Netanyahu. But right now, Obama has outmaneuvered Bibi on both Iran and Syria. Bibi can call Rouhani anything he wants, but the framework for 'what to do about Iran' has fundamentally shifted under his feet.

Not a fair deal. The most likely situation would be that a year from now, Al-Shabab will still be around planning attacks. These guys never fold their tents. Bet that they will be no different this time in a year or else, as your bet, a regional power.

It is my understanding that Iran has successfully tested missiles with the ability to hit Israel. That is part of Iran's defense strategy. Realpolitik: why would Iran forgo missiles that could reach Israel? Why would Israel not forgo weapons that can reach Iran? But Iran's testing of missiles is different from development of a nuclear weapon. Sure, Iran would have to have missiles or some other way to launch a nuclear attack. But those missiles would also be a conventional deterrent to attacks against Iran.

I think you really underestimate or misunderstand how collusion works. Most, if not all these security chiefs were trained at war colleges in the US. It doesn't matter if the CIA was present at the founding or subsequent meetings of the Condor group. It supplied strategic and technical knowledge at the least. More importantly, US training centers provided a way for security chiefs from throughout South America to develop lasting political/military and social relationships with each other and American intelligence. That's how real power works: indirectly.

Are some people claiming that the US 'not being sole superpower' began with this Syria thing? Absurd. The real question: the unraveling of the ME, the inflamed Sunni/Shia divisions all began with the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

As a possible strike neared, the Administrtion leaked that it was putting new targets in play, partly meaning missile infrastructure. Assad is much better off loosing chem weapons than his airstrips. The airstrips are vital to his brutal strategy. He saves them if he implements this Russian/US deal. Assad owes Putin. Putin is no hero, but if he'd call in his chips with Assad to force him into a cease-fire and negotiations, he just might turn into one. He's been unusually flexible and clever for a Russian leader this time, but.....

In fact, the last two weeks is just how the international system SHOULD work. Instead of vetoes in Security Council and artificially polarized agendas, both the US and Russia would get further competing at the diplomatic level If the US calling for Assad to leave is the reason a Security Council resolution failed a year and half - maybe 80,000 lives ago - then Clinton and Obama should have backed off that demand and called Russia's cards. Because Assad is still there with no plans to leave but tens of thousands have died in the interim. The problem with third parties, expecially the intelligence-sparse US, is they don't know ground conditions, overestimating the ability of the opposition time and again.

A few people are saying the rebels are against the chemical weapons deal made this week. I haven't seen one new article that says that, just an ambiguous quote from one of the rebels. Please supply a legitimate link if you are real.

1. Nobody, esp. Cole, said using the veto was more incidious when it was used by another country. If you are new to this post, I'd urge u to go back to Cole's others posts on the Middle East, UN, etc. Otherwise your charge is silly.
2. The Syrian government is the most likely user of the chemical weapons. This is a judegement call.
3. INMMHO (sic), you come across as an apologist for the Syrian government, and I knowl that might have been your intent.

I agree his piece was "condescending and tendentious" and said nothing new or insightful. Mr. Van Buren was scarred by what he say in Iraq and documented some of the waste and corruption. He should stop there. However, I think the mission creep in Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq were carried out under the banner of regime change and implanting Western=syle democracy and watch it spread throughout the Middle East. It wasn't a secret conspiracy, but it was an imperial plan.

because he said the portly minister knew how to 'chow down before his meal gets hot' meaning Syria jumped on the idea of international supervision of chemical weapons before people realized Putin raised it as a sham distraction from the daily killing and the whole idea was 'taken off the table'. I thought it was an apt description of the greed and malice and hypocracy of the Syrian regime.

I agree with you about Russian motives. However, Russia's getting nothing out of this war. Putin, if he is smart, should wrap himself in his new 'humanitarian' image and force Assad into a political settlement.

You are relying on the weakest argument of those who oppose a Syrian strike. Leave aside whether it is a well-known fact or not. There are other reasons to oppose a strike that are far more credible than 'Assad may not have done it."

I take issue with your last sentence. It looks to me like the American people have absorbed an object lesson that makes the majority firmly against a strike in Syria. They are hardly sleepwalkers. Remarkably, a lot of the opposition is simply that a strike won't deter other countries from using chemical weapons. This can all be cynicism of a war-weary nation, but it could be signaling a deep crack in how both Dems and Repubs sell the militarization of American foreign policy. It's like the boy who cried wolf but nonetheless left of trail of disaster that was his own doin.

I am surprised more isn't being said about the lack of support within the American public for a strike on Syria. Why don't Americans want to bomb Syria for a horrific, deadly gas attack? Why did they go along with strikes against Libya but not Syria?

Bacevitch is astute in seeing this as an opportunity for non-interventionists to declare victory (whatever Congress does) and present an alternative. Instinctively, the public is seeing that the militarization of FP has not worked and been destructive domestically as well as globally. The real question if how to break open the debate.

Whatever Juan think, I believe there are a number of blog trolls going around using almost the exact language about why would the regime, winning the war, use chemical weapons now and infuriate the West.

'faith' has little to do with this. it is a political battle for power. the Egyptian military has vast commercial holdings besides its prominent status. it is political Islam the military opposes, that is, the quest for a more religiously defined state that would likely limit the military's options. in fact, the MB and military seem to be in competition on the commercial side as well.

You are responding to a lower form of argument. The issue is not
'intimidation' but how the information can be used now, and if not now, in the future under different Presidents. I think you know that.

So why do you even respond to McPhee? Does he get under your skin? Bravo! Mr. McPhee, you have won. People read and react to your posts. You stimulate all sorts of discussions! You're over-the-board use of English is sometimes annoying and sometimes hilarious. It's hard to imagine IC without you!

JT: I am amused by your rhetoric-laden comments. Some of them are quite clever, and I think it's interesting that you get under so many peoples' skins. Right on. But this is a lucid, straight-forward comment that addresses key points in the debate. How do you decided to do one of your immitation Joyce comments and one like this?

I don't think the blog has been monochromatic. There has been plenty written about US relations with Iran since WW2 = the '53 coup, pampering the Shah, ignoring SAVAK, 1979, hostages, nuclear issue, etc. History should be seen in its dynamics, in its motion. Iran doesn't threaten the US directly. At this time, 2013, Obama's decisions are driven by Israel. Sanctions are a compromise between real negotiation and bombing Iran's nuclear facility. Obama's policy is based on keeping Irsrael from taking unilateral actions and,in that context, ensuring Israel retains a nuclear monopoly in the Middle East.

Your early history may be right, but they ran straight into a Palestinian nationalist revolution, now endorsed by the world community. No amount of settlements built to wipe Palestine off the face of the earth will solve Israel's problems.

Support for Hezbilla and Hamas is openly part of Iran's foreign policy. Iran is too weak to fight Israel directly but wants to keep pressure on the Israelis. Even if Iran built a nuclear bomb, Israel could destroy Iran in any confrontation. Israel holds the cards. No one would deny that.

Israel could protect itself more by embracing the Arab Peace Plan than constantly threatening Iran. The API would lead to recognition of Israel by most Arab countries and isolate Iranian supported guerrilla war threats. On the other hand, Israel's stance towards Palestinian independence and war drum against Iran isolates it in the world community and invites boycotts, etc. I doubt Israel has ever underestimated the strength of its enemies since 1948. Israel's current problem is overestimating their strength - at least for public consumption or propaganda purposes by its political leaders, as opposed to the more balanced views of the IDF and intelligence elite. Strategically, neither underestimating nor overestimating your enemy will produce your established goals. This is something Netanyahu doesn't understand or willfully ignores.